Other problems...such as disparities in the quality of education in racially identifiable schools, are well-suited to resolution by school authorities

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala on June 30 issued a scathing opinion, which criticized desegregation efforts of Huntsville school officials and ordered the city into private mediation with the federal government.

But she also tacked on a 41-page appendix of facts and figures.

That's information she researched, she put together and she considered important enough for the court itself to publish.

Some of it she derived from Huntsville's evidence. But much of it she drew from her own research into public records available through the Alabama State Department of Education.

Here's the first thing she thought was significant. Racial percentages, before and after rezoning.

She looked at the numbers now with and without transfers required by the city's 1970 desegregation order. Then she looked at numbers after the city's proposed rezoning.

U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala

But in calculating the future percentages, she excluded those majority-to-minority transfers. She wrote in June 30 that: "The record reveals the district's aversion to M-to-M transfers. The superintendent has criticized M-to-M transfers publicly."

She added later in her opinion: "Moreover, the evidence supports the inference that the Board will end M-to-M transfers once the district obtains a declaration of unitary status."

She noted that the board's plan would have raised the percentages of black students at seven majority white schools, with the biggest jumps at Blossomwood and Jones Valley.

But she criticized the city plan for doing little to change racial composition at majority black schools, instead "consolidating black students in schools with poor standardized test results and graduation rates and educational programs that are bare-boned..."

Yet the judge included just three pages of tables showing racial percentages. It wasn't the main focus of her independent research.

The racial data came from Huntsville officials. And she limited her inquiry to Huntsville, Grissom and Jemison feeder patterns.

Then she turned to student achievement. And she put together 32 pages on reading and math scores pulled from state records.

Did the Huntsville school system play a role in shaping achievement gaps?

Legally, it's an important question. Huntsville is obligated to take steps to right the constitutional wrong of dual schooling. Huntsville is not constitutionally obligated to fix modern American society, neither housing patterns nor income inequality. But what is happening here?

The judge used the average reading scores for high school students from 2011 because that was the last year Alabama released school-level averages on the Stanford Achievement Test. That's important because the SAT is set with 50 as the national average, meaning the judge zeroed in on the last time Alabama reported a score that made for simple national comparison.

Finally, in the last few pages, she came to her point.

She did something school officials seldom do. She compared results over time in the mostly white schools and the mostly black schools of Huntsville. She compared test scores for third-graders in 2004 to test scores for high school students in 2011.

She had strongly objected to the school system's assertion in court that the board doesn't offer as many advanced classes at majority black schools because the students don't sign up.

"At the hearing on the Board's student assignment motion, the district tried to blame the students at Butler and Johnson for the absence of accelerated courses in those schools," wrote Haikala in one lengthy section.

She later added: "The uncomfortable truth is that in a high school in which only 33% of the students read at or above grade level, many students probably are not prepared for the rigor of college level AP courses...Reading skills are developed in elementary school, not in high school."

Her data points to her assessment: The system failed to provide the remedial help to close the gaps.

As Huntsville waits for months to hear the results of the desegregation talks, the judge's own data from last month gives some idea of what she thinks should be discussed behind closed doors.

"Some problems are beyond both the control of school authorities and the constitutional reach of the federal courts," wrote Haikala on June 30. "For example, a "school district is under no duty to remedy [racial] imbalance that is caused by demographic factors," and a district court has no power to fashion a remedy "where racial imbalance is not traceable, in a proximate way, to constitutional violations."

"Other problems though, such as disparities in the quality of education in racially identifiable schools, are well-suited to resolution by school authorities, so that a school district "must take all steps necessary to eliminate" inequities which are "vestiges of the [district's] unconstitutional de jure system."